Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is the current executive director of UN women with rank under-secretary-general of the United States. In the 1980s Mlambo-Ngcuka worked with the Young Women's Association (YWCA) where she lobbied within UN systems for jobs for young people and greater educational developments in Africa, Asia, and the Middle east. In 1994 Mlambo-Ngcuka was elected into parliament and soon served as a member of the national executive committee of the African National Congress. There she was appointed Minister of Minerals and Energy and helped reform rights regarding mining systems. From 2005-2008, the president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, appointed her as the Deputy President of South Africa. As the deputy she worked to bring the successes of the economy to impoverished people. In these past few years, Mlambo-Ngcuka has worked tirelessly to increase women's participation in peacekeeping operations. She has initiated HeForShe, a solidarity campaign meant to encourage all genders to participate in change and dismantle stereotypes. Her position in the fight for gender equality has been monumental and her influence continues to impact the lives of women around the world.
Wangari Maathai
Wangari Maathai is the founder of the Green Belt movement and a recipient of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. Maathai was born in a rural area in Kenya. In 1940 she obtained her degree in Biological Sciences and later pursued a Master of Science from Pittsburgh university. In 1971 she obtained her PH.D. from the University of Nairobi, becoming the first woman in all of east and central africa to get her doctorate. During this time in Nairobi, she fought for equal benefits for the women working at this university and even campaigned for the academic staff association to unionize in order to better negotiate benefits. Maathai was internationally acknowledged for her struggle to achieve environmental conservation, and for her work with human rights. In 1977, Wangari Maathai worked under the National Council of Women of Kenya to respond to the Kenyan women's needs. Women constantly reported that streams were no longer plentiful and food supplies were depleting, and that deforestation and environmental degradation were the central causes. Maathai created the Green Belt movement to combat this. The Green Belt Movement seeks to encourage people to examine their government’s inability to provide for citizens politically, economically, and sustain them environmentally.
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva is the leader behind some of India's most revolutionary environmentalist movements, most notably her movement to protect the biodiversity and integrity of India’s natural surroundings. From a very early age Shiva was surrounded by India’s natural beauty and was constantly grateful for the resources that nature had provided. She proceeded to graduate with a bachelors in science and pursue a doctorate focusing on the philosophy of physics completing her distrotation studying quantum theory. Shiva steered her career down a different path once she returned home to the Himalayas and DehraDun. There she developed a deep passion and love for the environment; she learned all about ecosystems, and biodiversity from the women who lived in these forests for all their lives. It was then Vandana Shiva decided to work for the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management and founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE). RFSTE's main goal has been to educate farmers on the benefits of maintaining biodiversity and individual crops, in addition, to convincing the farming community to steer away from commercially produced seeds. In doing so, RFSTE has established nearly 40 seed banks to preserve the original and natural seeds once found in India's soil. This is all a part of Shiva’s greater plan towards seed freedom where she hopes that one day the corporate patents on seeds will be eradicated for good and farmers around India will no longer be burdened by increasing seed prices and mired in debt. Shiva has used her activism around the world to bring attention to the dire situation of dwindling biodiversity and has used her platform to target big corporations that have placed a burden on farmers everywhere. Though she has received some criticism for her work, her revolutionary movements are starting new and necessary conversations about the ethics of corporate farming, and corporate domination of the foods grown around our world.
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